Vicente Napolitano scowled. All pretense of friendliness vanished. His right hand shifted in the trench coat pocket.
Tertia thought she would not cease staring at Drake until he shot her, but the cold charisma of Napolitano turned her eyes to him. The molten hate she felt for her brother was replaced by a curious feeling that she was closer in spirit to this man than she was to her biological sibling. Her heart calmed. Her pain was momentarily forgotten.
"I have no particular desire to antagonize Red Rum by severely interfering with one of its operatives," said Napolitano. "Francois Benz is a case in point, eh? But the CIA is perhaps a little more formidable than Red Rum, and certainly as ruthless. Well, Beata Madre, that is how the game is played. They want you removed from the picture, you see, and though I would let you go in exchange for the signorina, they will not be as merciful. But a chance I give you, as one man to another. Say, you remain behind, to fend as best you may, while I transport Miss Fontenay to... her fate." He managed a stiff smile. "Take it, il mio buon amico, or take the consequences."
Sanguineus spoke to Tertia without taking his eyes off Napolitano. "Sugar Bitch, take your best shot."
Her rightside jacket pocket was a gaping hole. Sickened, she said, "I lost it. It fell out."
She stood up, her body now wracked with pain. Her gaze returned to her brother as a means of taking her mind off everything that had gone wrong. He too could not stop looking at one whose life was slated for termination. The difference was that in his eyes there was no pain, nor hate, but the pleasantness that comes with success.
Drake shouted to her, "There always has to be a loser!"
Napolitano glanced back at him, frowned, and said to Sanguineus, "Pity me, that I have been burdened with a fool. But... business is business. The customer makes the rules. Have you reconsidered? The signorina has no shot to take, neither her best nor her worst. It is just you and I, compadre. Give me your answer."
"He has," said Tertia. Out of the depths of her anguish she laughed.
Napolitano turned half toward her with an ugly grin.
Suddenly his head jerked back, his face contorted. A patch of blood appeared on the snow behind him, from the direction of the shot.
As the mobster's knees give way, Sanguineus moved his gunhand a fraction to the left and fired at the same moment that Drake set off a burst of clamoring flame at the top of the ice-crusted cliff.
Drake dropped the rifle, a hand pressed to his groin, a gargled scream reaching out to Tertia like an admonitory Hermes.
Freed from her prison of fear, wild with fury, she pulled out her skinning knife, and, undaunted by the aches radiating throughout her body and the uncertainty of the situation, she ran to the open bay of the chopper and slashed at the head and neck of Drake as though she were slapping a delinquent child.
Sanguineus was right behind her, his Glock aimed at the pilot's helmet.
The rotary blades roared and began to turn.
Sanguineus fired. The tough glossy material of the helmet shattered.
He fired again, his last shot. The head slumped forward, the helmet, with its radio nomenclature, slipping down over the bearded face.
Meanwhile Tertia was making something unhuman of Drake's chest, throat, and face, like a maddened beast clawing its prey. It was not a pretty sight, not at all what she had intended a month ago, nor what Sanguineus had ever expected. He seized her arm and pulled her away from the weeping, choking Drake.
The young man doubled over, held by the safety belt, hanging down like a gutted porpoise.
"Ricky--! Ha--!"
Isabel was waving at them from the cliff, a Colt M4 carbine slung on one shoulder. "There's no fucking way I'm skiing off this fucker!"
"I thought you were Fred!" shouted Sanguineus.
"Rolgo? He's coming now, down the trail like a crippled old woman!"
Tertia looked up at the cliff, at the site of her ignominious fall, and saw Isabel turn and vanish. "Did you know she was involved? I thought Rolgo said she wanted me dead!"
"She's a double," Sanguineus explained. "She must be. She plays along with the CIA, and I have to believe that she funnels back information to our Director."
"She never said anything like that to me, and I've known her for months! There, that's the truth. Happy now? Well I sure am! Die you fucking bastard!" This, to the limp, quivering body of Drake LeCourt.
Then to Sanguineus as he went over to the Corsican corpse, grabbing the ankles: "Did she shoot the sniper?"
He dragged the body to the helicopter, leaving a thin red streak in the snow.
"She picked off the thugs at the clump of trees," he said, "and dusted one of the three bastards who came skiing after us. I got the other two." He manhandled the body into the bay. "Now she'll have to cover herself so her section chief doesn't get wise to her. She's a gutsy bitch."
.
Wiping his gloves on his pants, he smiled grimly at Tertia and said, "Napolitano was suspicious of her. He fingered her for a hit. I suppose Wong told her that I killed the asshole who was contracted to snuff her. That apparently swung her pretty firmly over to our side. I owe her. Damn if I don't. And I know what she'll want."
Rolgo appeared over a low rise of grey powder. The sky above the mountain peaks burned a bright red. It tinctured his gangly figure as he came gasping and panting down the slope to the level area, his skis ludicrously wide apart.
"Unstrap your brother," said Sanguineus to Tertia. "He bled out. Get his carcass to the back of the bay."
"Then what? Well THEN what? Are we to ski all the way to Gipfelhaus? And don't you understand that I've been beaten half to death by that fucking trail and your Big Drop?"
Sanguineus ignored her complaints. "Rolgo was a helicopter flight instructor in the Marine Corps," he said. "And that has me wondering..."
He stood back and ran his eyes over the Swiss flag painted on the tail of the craft. "Someone called off the ski patrol. This pilot was not from the Search and Rescue teams."
As Rolgo came trudging wearily up to them, Sanguineus asked him, "Who owns Sonnenhut?"
Rolgo paused to catch his breath. "The Napolitano syndicate," he said, his face covered in fog. "Don't look at me like that, it was only after a conference call with Dolina Galsworthy, Gina, and Isabel, that I learned of it. Officially it's the Associazione europea produttori di sport."
"And when was this call arranged?"
"Just prior to calling the medivac," smiled Rolgo. "I knew what to expect, and we planned accordingly. Now. Shall we get the hell out of here?"
Three hours later Madelaine Woolf pulled her Mercedes onto the wide shoulder of A40, outside Saint- Gervais-les-Bains.
The moon was balanced on the summit of Mount Blanc. It was too much. She took out her phone and got a picture before opening the boot of the car.
She heard the sounds of footsteps on snow and the crack of twigs.
"I've fresh hot coffee in a gallon urn, and biscuits with honey," she said as three figures came out from the trees. "How was the landing? You're all in one piece?"
Tertia stood leaning against the post of a kilometer marker. She watched Sanguineus pour steaming coffee into cups and hand them to Rolgo.
Madelaine took one and gave it to Tertia.
"A nice long rest at a villa in the south of France will do wonders," said Madelaine. "A safe house. You'll love it. There's a fantastic restaurant just up the road from it, a Ferris wheel in back!"
Tertia smiled despite herself. "Imagine that," she said.
Rolgo climbed in the front passenger seat, Madelaine in the driver's, switching the lights to low beam.
"I don't feel anything," Tertia said as Sanguineus came over with a box of honied biscuits. "No emotion. It's like I'm dead inside."
"The aftershock," he said. "You'll get over it. It was a hairy landing."
"It's not just that. It's everything. I'm wrung out. There's nothing left."
Sanguineus put an arm around her waist, drawing her up against him. "No, you'll get over it," he promised, looking into her misty, vulnerable eyes.
"I always do," he said.
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